Eucalyptus has deep roots in Orange County

There are so many eucalyptus trees in Orange County we hardly notice them at all. But these Australian natives are one of my first olfactory experiences: My preschool playground was covered in the woody and pungent seed pods crushed under the feet of 4-year-olds.

It's a mint-like smell I equate with Southern California and a tree I never get tired of looking at.

Eucalyptuses came to Southen California circa 1860. Phineas Banning, a wealthy entrepreneur in the shipping industry, planted them from seed at his Wilmington estate. The seeds were passed on to him by an Australian missionary.

Ellwood Cooper, an oil man and horticulturist in Santa Barbara, bought 2,000 acres in 1870, and because the land was sparsely vegetated except for scattered oaks and sycamores, he raised more than 150,000 eucalyptus trees of 24 varieties not only as windbreaks, but for ornamental purposes.

The blue gum variety could grow 60 feet in six years, and suddenly everyone got a little greedy on the lumber front. Since Orange County was virtually treeless except in the canyons, speculation ran high for eucalyptus as a source of wood for the building industry.

Abbot Kenney, a Venice developer, distributed free seeds across the state around 1880 and promoted its virtues as a windbreak, source of eucalyptus oil to treat coughs and colds, and as a speculative source of lumber.

Laguna Beach, through the Timber Culture Act of 1871, offered 160 acres of free land to anyone who would plant 10 acres of eucalyptuses.

Farmers plowed their produce fields and planted gum. In fact, what is now Lake Forest was once a eucalyptus plantation.

By 1904, there was a eucalyptus craze raging. A rumor that the United States was experiencing a hardwood famine had everyone planting on what space they could find – even in their own back yards.

By 1912, 50,000 acres in Southern California were devoted to the trees. Nurseryman Theodore Payne in Los Angeles became the largest source of seed.

Raising eucalyptuses was heavily promoted as a solution for financial trouble, and everyone got in on the act.

But the rush went bust in 1913 when the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the wood was virtually useless for lumber because it cracked, warped and twisted.

What remains are the windbreaks, the rows between properties, and street trees in some cities.